The Sun, being the paragon of finely-researched investigative journalism it is, has uncovered a terrible truth about the forthcoming Nintendo 3DS.

It’s really ugly.

Only kidding – apparently the upcoming Nintendo handheld could damage the eyesight of children, affecting the development of their eyes. If you wish to muddy your browser then the whole article can be found here.

Of course, this is nothing new if you were a gamer in the early 90’s when VR was at its height:

Legible version can be found here. Will this stop people from buying it for their mewling litters? Probably not. But say what you like about the Game Gear, it never sent anyone blind.

I agree with Weatherbox on the DS. That thing almost restored my faith in gaming (before a billion shitty games came out for it).

I played the 3DS when I went to E3. I kind of liked it. It felt like you were playing with a small diorama in a little box. Some of the games did make me feel sick to my stomach though. But that was probably due to my proximity to the Nintendo girls.

It’s like you’re looking into a small 3D box, rather than something ‘immersive’. You feel like you could poke your finger in to the screen but it looks like it only goes about 1/2 inch deep. There’s a slider on the side that turns it back to 2D.

I played a submarine game which I really liked. It was slow paced and it wasn’t really clear what to do. It was probably only a demo but that’s exactly the type of game I’d like to see on it. I also played Nintendogs. Which was just exactly the same but in 3D. And I played Kid Icarus which tried to have a greater depth of field but just made me sick. The character was way up the front and the things you were shooting were way at the back. I saw a demo of Resident Evil which just looked blurry. It’s probably going to be ‘too difficult to program for 3rd party developers’.

The one thing that did stand out though, was the sound. I never really pay attention to sound and usually prefer 8 bit soundtracks. Maybe it was the headphones they supplied but it sounded really good. I’d better stop here before this turns in to some serious commentary or something.

Lara Croft’s bum might look good on it. How’s that for a preview quote?

I once bumped into some of the developers of the submarine game in an 8-bit themed cafe in Kyoto. I think it made their day that I had actually heard of their game! Looks pretty good but the 3DS will inevitably be a rip-off and won’t drop in price even when they bring out a less ugly version a year later.